oil well explosion

[John Daugherty]

Let me start this story by explaining where I live. I live in East Tennessee in a small town of about 3500. I live in the "burbs" outside of town on a dead end street. It's about two miles long and about 50 families live on the entire road.

For the past couple years with oil prices going crazy there has been a huge increase in drilling for oil all around this area. Easily within 1-mile radius of the house there are probably 40 oil wells. Just off the road I live on within 100-200 feet of the road are 5 wells.

Now here’s the story. Just up the road about 200 yards they have been putting in another well. It usually takes about 2 - 3 weeks to get one in. They hit what they called a large pressure pocket Tuesday around 1 pm and it began blowing gas and oil. The only way to describe the sound is that it sounded like a jet engine. They worked through out the day and night trying to get it capped and were having trouble. The well is only about 100 - 150 feet off the road. The blowing oil saturated a large area all around the well even running into the road. The smell of gas was strong all night. Tanker trucks came in and out all night long caring out the excess oil they were pumping from an overflow pit.

I was getting ready to go to work and had stepped out onto my porch to see if I needed a jacket and if it was raining. There is a small strip of trees between my house and the drilling site. I was looking in that direction when somewhere between 6:30 and 6:45am I thought the gates of hell had been opened. The entire place exploded! I felt a heat wave and the house shook. I have never been so terrified in my entire life. I don’t know how, but thank God no one was killed. A lot of property damage however. I think about 2 to 3 acres went up in about 15 seconds.

Here are a few pics of the day it happened. I grabbed the camera and snapped a few pics. They are a little blurry I wasn't really concerned with quality at that moment. The first one is about 15 min after it happened. The trees are about 45 - 50 feet tall and close to the center is a small rectangular area that's a transformer on a power pole. A crew from Texas in here now working to put it out. I've included some shots of them.

[John Daugherty]

a couple more

[Keith Starosta]

Holy cow!!! That is crazy! It's unreal that nobody was hurt....

- Keith

[Ken Fitzgerald]

John.......that's what happens when gas ignites......sparks from anything can touch 'em off. That's also why the make and should use "blowout preventers". Hopefully nobody working on the rig got killed.

[John Daugherty]

They think a passing car set it off. The guy in the car was burned. He was air lifted to Vanderbilt Hospital. No one on the rig was hurt. They weren't drilling with mud they were using air. After seeing the devastation it's only by the grace of God no one was killed.

[Steve Kubien]

Amazing more people weren't seriously hurt. Glad to hear you are ok. This does beg the question though....who was the m*r*n who would allow oil rigs to be set up so close to residential property?

Take care,
Steve

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Steve.....state regulations typically determine where and how close they can drill. In the oil boom of the 60's.....my father worked on oil rigs in Ohio....so close to each other that they were able to drop 2x12s from the floor of one rig to the floor of another rig and borrow tools from each other.

[Belinda Barfield]

As the others have said, amazing there weren't more injuries. Glad to know you are okay. Does homeowner's insurance cover damages from something like that? If so it would seem the close proximity of the wells would send your rates sky high.

[John Daugherty]

Belinda, I have been thinking the same thing. I have a friend who is an agent and I will be asking him about it Monday.

[Michael Phillips]

This was really foolish drilling practices on the part of the oil company. You should not be drilling at this depth without blowout preventers. Especially if they have geologic formations that are potentially hydrocarbon bearing. Drilling with air makes it 10 times as stupid. You usually drill with air because the formations are unable to sustain the hydrostatic pressures of a drilling fluid. The drilling fluids biggest function is to hold back geologic pressures so if you don't have that luxury you should at least have blowout preventers.

I'm a directional driller in Colorado and have been in the industry for 17 years. I would walk off location if asked to do what these people were doing. By the way, directional drilling is the reason you no longer need oil derricks stacked side by side to develop a location.

[John Daugherty]

Michael,

Thanks for the info. I was told that they did have a blowout preventer and it failed.

The EPA has a petroleum geologist in site. He said yesterday that the pressure at the well head was between 4500 and 6000 psi and that blowout preventers aren't designed to withstand that pressure.

Here are a couple more pictures. They are in sequence. Look at the fire tornado on the right!